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Chap, Copyright A T o..__ 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE INNER LIFE 



The Inner Life 

A Study in Christian Experience j| 






By 
Bishop John H. Vincent 




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United Society of Christian Endeavor 
Boston and Chicago 






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56420 

l~.ibi**ury of Con«r M( 
'fcC lUPtlS Kttt!VED 

OCT 4 1900 

Cnpyfigtit iwtry 

SECOND COPY. 

Deftv6f«d to 
OHOtR DIVISION, 

OCT 18 1900 






Copyright, 1 900, 

by the 

United Society of Christian Endeavor 



AN OUTLINE. 

I. A Picture of Land and Sea and Sky. 

II. Mental Pictures. 

III. After Forty Years. 

IV. A Moral Conflict. 

V. A Laboratory Experiment. 

VI. Two Worlds. 

VII. The Inner World a Real World. 

VIII. A World of Mystery. 

IX. The < ; Me ' ' and the ' { Not Me. " 

X. The Ceaselessly Active World. 

XL The Relation of Brain and Spirit. 

XII. The Choosing Power. 

XIII. " The Feeling of Oughtness." 

XIV. The Reality— God. 
XV. The Universal Inquiry. 

XVI. The Inward Trend of Character. 

XVIL The Important Question. 

XVIII. The Study of One's Inner Life. 

XIX. Jesus and the Inner Life. 

XX. The Reality of the Inner Life. 

XXI. The Power of the Inner Life. 

XXII. The Christian Consciousness. 

XXIII. Another Picture of Land and Sea and Sky. 

XXIV. Studies in the Inner Life: 

The Philosophy of Subjective Experience. 
The Essence of True Religion. 



AN OUTLINE. 



XXV. The Host of Witnesses: 

The Redeemed in Heaven. 
The Saints in Lowly Homes. 
XXYI. A Glance at Illustrious Examples: 

Zachary Macaulay.— John Duncan.— Samuel 
Budgett.— Wilberforce— John Howard.— 
Elizabeth Fry.— Stephen Grellet— John Fos- 
ter.— Frederick W. Robertson.— The Hares. 
—Rutherford.— McCheyne— John Woolman. 
—Madame Guy on.— John Wesley.— Carvos- 
so— John Fletcher.— Edward Payson.— John 
Bunyan.— Ers kin e.— John Pulsford.— Mau- 
rice.— Joseph Roux.— Thomas aKempis. 
XXVII. This Inner Life True to Human Nature. 
XXVIII. How Promote the True Inner Life ? 



Prelude. 




HE true " inner life" is the life of 
the spirit ; and it is the life of the 
Holy Spirit within the human 
spirit. 

Whatsoever good is found in the heart 
of man — from the first throb of protest 
against evil to the fullest witness of in- 
dwelling peace and power — is because of 
the presence and activity of the Holy 
Spirit of God. 

" The dispensation of the Father " is fol- 
lowed by "the dispensation of the Son" 
and consummated and crowned by " the 
dispensation of the Holy Spirit." 

" These things have I spoken unto you 
while yet abiding with you. But the 
Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom 
the Father will send in my name, he shall 
teach you all things, and bring to your 
remembrance all that I said unto you." — 
Jesus in John 14 : 25, 26, r. v. 

7 



8 PRELUDE. 

"That ye maybe strengthened with 
power through his Spirit in the inward 
man ; that Christ may dwell in j r our 
hearts through faith ; . . . that ye may 
be filled unto all the fulness of God." — 
Paul in Eph. 3 : 16-19, e. v. 



The Inner Life: 

A Study in Christian Experience. 
I. 




NDER a cloudy sky a landscape 
of mountain and plain stretches 
toward a dark and stormy sea. 
From far away inland a river 
flows, having its source among the moun- 
tains, broadening as it passes through the 
plain, and entering the sea not far from 
yonder bold headland on which stands 
an ancient lighthouse. Ranges of moun- 
tains, but for the clouds that crown them 
to-day, would define the horizon line on 
the one side, while on the other the sea 
is lost in a veil of mist. One hears the 
roar of great breakers upon the shore, 
and .now and then sees at the base of the 
high promontory the dashing of the spray 
against its rocky front. When night 
comes on and the darkness deepens, the 

9 



10 THE INNER LIFE: 

headland and the sea are lost to sight, 
but one hears the wild roar of the waters 
and at intervals catches a glimpse of the 
sharp light from the high tower that 
crowns the headland. 

Standing upon a slight eminence in the 
centre of this dark landscape is a solitary 
man, who, before the night falls, in 
thoughtful mood sweeps with his eye the 
limited horizon, sees the low foot-hills be- 
longing to the mountain range, the val- 
ley, the plain, the surface of the river, 
the bold outjutting promontory, and hears 
the moaning of the waters at the bar as 
the great stream becomes a part of the 
greater sea. He lingers till the darkness 
of night closes in about him. He listens 
to the roar of the ocean, the sweep of the 
wind, the restless murmur of the passing 
river, his face once in a while touched 
with the light from the great revolving 
lantern on the lighthouse. One might 
detect on that face a fixed expression of 
mingled sadness, awe, and alarm. If one 
were to catch the words he speaks in his 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 11 

soliloquy, uttered in that solemn and de- 
pressing darkness, he might hear a com- 
parison between the life of the man him- 
self and the landscape on which he 
looked, — the hidden heaven, the moun- 
tain solitude made doubly desolate by the 
impending clouds, and the vast waste of 
the turbulent and complaining sea. 

The landscape and the spectator are 
thus brought before us. 



II. 




ET us now in thought retire to a 
well-warmed room in a house 
yonder among the hills far re- 
moved from the sound of the sea ; 
and, as the same man sits by the flicker- 
ing light of an open fire, let us by some 
psychic power look at another landscape, 
—that on which his own inner eye rests 
as he recalls the vision of the afternoon 
and contrasts the warmth and cheer of 
the open fire with the chill and desolate- 
ness of the world on which he gazed a 
short time before down by the seaside. 



12 THE INNER LIFE: 

"Within this man's mind we see the 
same landscape that spread out before 
him when he stood in the afternoon and 
early evening where first we saw him. 
With him we now see again the uplands, 
the mountains, the river, the valley, the 
misty sea, and now and then a flashing 
light from the lofty lighthouse. 

But in this mental picture thus open to 
our inspection we see somewhat which he 
did not see before. Some mystic power 
has added to the picture in his mind, and 
with him we see a ship drifting out of the 
darkness toward the shore, and with him 
we hear the boom of the signal gun 
from sailors who, fearing a dreadful 
doom, thus plead for help. The man 
who sees this, now sitting by the fireside, 
did not see it in reality as he stood by 
the shore to-day ; but the vision which 
imagination has added to the picture 
sends an involuntary shudder through his 
frame. 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 13 
III. 




HE years go by, forty of them, 
and five thousand miles to the 
eastward, beyond the sea and 
across the continent of Europe, 
we find our friend again. He sits an 
idler on a bench in the public park of an 
Eastern city. He is an old man now. 
He has closed his eyes in meditation ; and 
we, again, gifted by clairvoyant power, 
see his thought ; and again we behold a 
vision of sea and shore, river and moun- 
tain line, deepening darkness and flashing 
light. We notice a slight shudder pass- 
ing through his frame as he recalls the 
ship drifting to the shore, and hears 
amidst the boom of breaking waves the 
call of the ship's gun. Forty years have 
passed, and five thousand miles of space 
intervene ; but after all this lapse of time 
and leap of space he looks on the same 
picture, imagines the same disaster, and 
feels the same sadness as memory recalls 
that impression of sympathy between the 
melancholy landscape and his more mel- 
ancholy spirit. 



14 ' THE INNER LIFE: 



IV. 




NE thing that took place within 
this man's soul that same dark 
evening forty years ago we did 
not at that time notice. "We did 
not know of a fierce conflict between sin 
and righteousness, a struggle between the 
generous and the ignoble, the spiritual 
and the sensual, elements within him. 
And we did not see the defeat of right- 
eousness in the resolve formed that dread- 
ful night to do a deed against which the 
voice of the heavens within him entered 
imperious protest ; but to-day, forty years 
after, as he sits five thousand miles away 
from the scene of his defeat, a flush comes 
to his cheek and his lips move as if to 
confess, deprecate, and denounce his own 
folly in that past crisis of his life. 

In this detailed and double picture ob- 
serve first of all the persistent continu- 
ance of the man's personality. He is the 
same man. His memory remains. His 
power of imagination remains. And 
his moral sense, which asserts itself after 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 15 

all these years, accentuates his personal 
responsibility. Time and location, age 
and circumstances, make no changes. He 
might still say : " I am I. The choices 
and the deeds of the long ago and the far 
away are mine." 



CT us notice another singular fact ; 
it is in itself a laboratory experi- 
ment. Tou who have read these 
pages and have seen this picture 
now hold it in your own minds, — this 
picture of the man by the sea, among the 
hills, and in a foreign city. And it will 
be possible for you to recall it many years 
hence. Indeed, circumstances might 
easily occur and combine to make it im- 
possible for you ever to forget it. The 
incident, whether fictitious or historic, is 
with you, and you can easily believe its 
fidelity to fact because of the mental 
phenomena and powers and processes 
with which you are familiar. 




16 



THE INNER LIFE: 



tion 



VI. 

E have thus been introduced to 
two worlds : first, that patch 
of the outward and visible 
world ; and then the reproduc- 
of it all in the inner world, — the 




mental picture of the landscape, the tem- 
pest, and the strong feeling of response 
within our souls to the simple account of 
a struggle and a defeat. And we are 
ready to believe it all because of some 
sorrowful experience of our own at some 
period of our lives. 



YII. 




this inner world and to certain 
phenomena of the inner life we 
are now to give some attention. 
It is a world about which we all 
know something, and what we know at 
all we know as certainly as we know the 
facts of the world of sense. Indeed, Ave 
are better acquainted with the former 
than with the latter. More real to us, 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 17 

indeed, is this world of thought, of feel- 
ing, of moral conviction, in which desire 
burns, guilt trembles, hope aspires, will 
resolves, and character develops ; a 
world intellectual, aesthetical, ethical, 
spiritual ; a world which sustains an inti- 
mate relation to the outer universe, and 
which in some mysterious way connects 
us with the invisible and eternal Being, 
First of all, Source of all, Father of all. 
This inner world is a world close at hand, 
the phenomena of which are in the pos- 
session of every man. To collect them he 
need not take a long journey or a short 
one ; he need not look out of his own 
windows to find the field for scientific re- 
search in this department. He has 
within himself his library and laboratory. 
He holds the stars as well as the tele- 
scope within his own personality. Let 
us think a little about this " other " 
world. 



18 THE INNER LIFE: 



VIII. 

HE inner world is a world of 
mystery. We see only patches, 
limited areas of it at any one 
time. Fogs settle down and en- 




shroud it, shutting out the wider horizon. 
A thought arrests you. You cannot tell 
whence it came. You cannot account 
for the time of its coming, or for the in- 
tensity of the feeling it excites. We are 
all often surprised by the revelations 
within ourselves, to ourselves, of our- 
selves. At any moment the experiences 
of a remote past in our lives may re- 
turn, and with startling force and vivid- 
ness. The friend, the brother, the 
mother, years ago parted from us, sits 
again at our side, or suddenly leaps into 
view, smiling with new greeting and then 
waving a farewell with that " vanished 
hand " we have missed so long. We have 
visions of landscapes, Alpine scenery 
with dizzy depths and lofty heights. 
Great things and little things come into 
our minds ; thoughts base and thoughts 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 19 

noble ; puzzles that knit the brow ; trifles 
that cause the careless smile ; majesties 
and tragedies that instantly and involun- 
tarily express themselves on our features. 
We leap from theme to theme in a sec- 
ond. We think of self, of the next neigh- 
bor, of somebody in India, of the moon, 
of some remote star, and never wonder 
at the speed or reach of our thoughts. 

IX. 




NE recognizes himself as a per- 
sonality. He says, " I am." He, 
the person who knows that he 
is, knows also that there is some- 
what besides and beyond himself. He 
recognizes this other existence, and says, 
" That also w." The " I " and the " other," 
the " me " and the " not me," constitute 
the world of his actual and possible 
knowledge. As he is sure of himself, the 
" I," he is sure also of the somewhat out- 
side that also is. In the " other that is " 
he also finds other "persons," each of 
whom says, "I am." He says, "I am." 



20 THE INNER LIFE: 

They say, " We are." And he and they 
say: " Besides us there is somewhat 
which we know to be, but which is unlike 
us ; somewhat we know, but which we 
think of as not knowing us and as not 
being able to know us as we know it." 
Thus we find two forms of being, — the 
personal and the non-personal. 

The person knows himself. He knows 
that he is. He knows to some extent 
the processes of his own activity. This 
power of self-knowing is consciousness. 
Thus one comes to know some of the 
facts and laws of sensation, perception, 
conception, memory, imagination, voli- 
tion. He knows something of this inner 
world. What he sees, however, is like a 
part of the sea overhung with mist. The 
remote horizon line is never visible. 
Clouds and darkness hang about it. It 
is only a portion of the actual life within 
that at any one time comes into view. 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 21 



X. 

HIS inner life is ceaselessly active. 




Even in sleep it may break in 
dreams upon our consciousness. 
It moves onward like a stream, 
never still, now turbid and rough, now 
clear and calm, but ever moving, now 
shining in the light, now passing into 
darkness like the river Alph in Coleridge's 
Kubla Khan, 

"Through caverns measureless to man 
Down to a sunless sea. ' ' 

This subjective life is like a suspended 
wire always quivering, a pulse always 
throbbing, a voice always speaking, a 
panorama always unfolding. Professor 
William James speaks of the " insensibly 
continuous " thought, the changes of 
which are never absolutely abrupt. He 
says : " Consciousness does not appear to 
itself in chopped seas and bits. Such 
words as 'chain' and 'train' do not de- 
scribe it fitly. As it presents itself in the 
first instance, it is nothing jointed ; it 




22 THE INNER LIFE: 

flows. A ' river ' or a ' stream ' are the 
metaphors by which it is most naturally 
described. . . . Let us call it the stream 
of thought, of consciousness, or of subjec- 
tive life." 

XI. 

E cannot here discuss the scien- 
tific explanation of the nature 
and genesis of this inner life. 
"We cannot enter into the ques- 
tions started by the psychologist and the 
physiologist. Body and mind must be 
studied together. Brain and spirit are 
most intimately connected. It is claimed 
by a specialist in physiological psychology 
" that a passage of a cloud over the sun 
will change the rhythm in breathing and 
the pulse-rate of a sleeping child ; and, if 
we expose the brain, its whole bulk can be 
seen to swell when a lamp is approached 
to a patient's eye." It will be sufficient 
for our purpose to quote a strong state- 
ment of the distinguished psychologist of 
Harvard University already named in 
these pages: "All mental states are fol- 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 23 

lowed by bodily activity of some sort. 
. . . Although we affirm the coming to 
pass of thought as a consequence of me- 
chanical laws, ... we clo not in the least 
explain the nature of thought by affirm- 
ing this, and in that latter sense our prop- 
osition is not materialism. . . . The fact 
is inexplicable, and the immediate essence 
of consciousness can never be rationally 
accounted for by any material cause." 

XII. 




ET us go one step further in the 
study of this inner life. Its cen- 
tral power is the choosing, the de- 
termining power. Dewey speaks 
of it as " connecting and conditioning all 
mental activity." And this is the will. 
By the power of the will the soul con- 
trols and modifies things, or uses things 
to get the most out of them and to avoid 
the greatest measure of possible harm 
from them. Through the will man tills 
the soil, plants trees, grows grain, cuts 
down the native forests, bridges streams, 



24 THE INNER LIFE: 

builds walls, tunnels mountains, constructs 
boats, crosses wide wastes of ocean, resists 
the influence of uncongenial climate, and 
performs a variety of acts to protect life, 
preserve health, secure comfort, and in- 
crease his power of achievement. 

It is thus out of the heart of man 
where dwells this power of purpose that 
all the externals of civilization spring. 
The marble is hidden in Pentelicus. The 
bare summit of the Acropolis shines in 
the sunlight. The soul of the artist 
dreams and resolves. And lo, the Par- 
thenon that slept in the unopened heart 
of Pentelicus crowns the lofty heights of 
the Acropolis. Thus the inner power of 
the will transforms the outward world. 
Thought, courage, resolve, and hope over- 
come external barriers, and according to 
the measure of a man's ability is his suc- 
cess. " As a man thinketh in his heart, 
so is he. 5 ' Here is the secret of life — 
within and not without. Therefore "a 
contented mind is a continual feast." 
Wealth, luxury, palace, and throne can- 
not make a successful or a happy life. 




A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE, 25 
XIII. 

S we look within, we find another 
power — the moral sense, the feel- 
ing of right and wrong. Pro- 
fessor Ladd calls it "the feeling 
of oughtness." Darwin speaks of "that 
short but imperious word ' ought.' " 
Thackeray described one as "tingling 
with the consciousness of having done a 
good deed " ; and we may add, there is 
also a stinging with the consciousness of 
having done a wrong deed. This moral 
judgment is present in all men, in all 
civilization, among barbarians as well as 
among the most cultivated. It varies 
according to the kind and measure of 
education, but it waits alike upon igno- 
rance and knowledge to utter its man- 
date and apply its goad. 

The voice of moral consciousness may 
be stifled, but it cannot be wholly si- 
lenced. It is persistent in its demands. 
We may not be able to study the finer 
processes of psychology and physiolog}^ as 
they bring to us the phenomena of con- 



26 THE INNER LIFE: 

sciousness ; we may not always be able 
to trace the line of separation between 
the physical reality and the inner sense ; 
but the convictions, feelings, assents, re- 
jections, of the moral nature are clear 
and positive, so that the unlearned and 
the pagan as well as the Christian phi- 
losopher must concede that there is in 
every man an arbiter within him, decid- 
ing in favor of the right and against the 
wrong. 

Here is the mystery of moral being 
and responsibility, " the voice of an im- 
perious and besetting God " ; what 
George Washington called "that little 
spark of celestial fire " ; recognized by 
the pagans of old and by students of 
man and society everywhere ; hinting at 
the warmth and calm and light of the 
eternal harmonies, and also suggesting 
the wrath of righteousness against 
wrong-doing. 




A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 27 
XIV. 

JACK of the ethical sense in man 
is a vast reality. That reality 
is — God ! 

From whatever source the idea 
comes to man, — by reason, by traditional 
remains of earlier revelation, by intui- 
tion, — the idea is present everywhere of 
a great First Cause, who has created and 
who now governs all things. This great 
First Cause we must think of as a person. 
The anthropomorphic conception is in- 
evitable. Man has a sense of personal 
responsibility, the forward look to an ac- 
count and a consequence, the sense of 
moral defect and need, the consciousness 
of a struggle between himself and a better 
and higher power not himself, represented 
within him. And often he has the feel- 
ing that this higher power is foreign, yet 
friendly, to himself. The soul cries out, 
" O - that I knew where I might find 
him ! " but it also exclaims, " Behold I go 
forward, but he is not there ; and back- 
ward, but I cannot perceive him." There 




28 THE INNER LIFE: 

is in man everywhere an uplook toward 
the great First Cause, with desire to wor- 
ship, to conciliate, to appease. 



XV. 

EN" have alwa) T s in all parts of 
the world inquired after God. 
Their search has not been in 
vain. Ideals embodied in max- 
ims, general convictions, intimations, con- 
science, have all lifted men toward God. 
One might quote from the sacred writ- 
ings of all the ages and of all people ; 
and the more this subject is investigated, 
the more abundant are the proofs that 
the religious factor is always and every- 
where active. 

Plutarch said, " If we traverse the 
world, it is possible to find cities without 
walls, without letters, without kings, with- 
out wealth, without coin, without schools 
and theatres ; but a city without a tem- 
ple, or that practises not prayer and the 
like, no one ever saw." From the jour- 
nal and letters of David Livingstone read 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 29 

the record of human aspirations among 
the natives of Africa, sometimes almost 
suppressed by despair. Hear Sekomi, 
chief of the Bamangwato tribe, after 
being seated in deep thought in his hut 
for some time, he addressed Livingstone, 
"I wish you would change my heart; 
for it is proud, proud and angry, always 
very uneasy, and continually angry w x ith 
some one." 

This thirst for deliverance from self- 
discouragement and failure, this quench- 
less desire after God, we find every- 
where. 

This religious sense — the sense of need 
and helplessness and longing after the 
great First Cause — is as much a part of 
man's nature as is his imagination or his 
will. And yet we may search the skies 
and the seas, exhaust the resources of 
this earth in its multitudinous forms of 
inanimate and animate existence, and 
find no God. The telescope finds no 
God. The microscope shows no God. 
The crucible reveals no God. But 
within, within, — in the heart, although 



30 THE INNER LIFE: 

as hard as the stone on which Jacob pil- 
lowed his head at the beginning of his 
long pilgrimage to Padan-Aram, — within 
we may, if we will, — and sometimes, 
oftentimes whether we will or not, — hear 
a voice at first inarticulate, that we find 
to be the voice of God ; and we may say 
with the patriarch, as we awake out of 
our sleep : " Surely the Lord is in this 
place ; and I knew it not. . . . How 
dreadful is this place ! This is no other 
but the house of God, and this is the gate 
of heaven." 

The development of what we call civ- 
ilization does not diminish the restless 
longing of the soul after a knowledge of 
the First Cause. In all civilization the 
same idea abides. In the higher civiliza- 
tion it is more tenacious than in the 
lower. It is based upon larger theories 
and more adequate (always at the best 
inadequate) conceptions of man and his 
relation to the First Cause and the char- 
acter and purpose of that First Cause. 
The highest and most exalted men and 
women of every race and of every age 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 31 

are essentially religious. Mr. Matthew 
Arnold says, " As all roads lead to Kome, 
so all questions lead to religion. 5 ' And 
he says again, " Eeligion is the voice of 
deepest experience " ; and Carlyie, " It is 
well said in every sense that a man's re- 
ligion is the chief fact with regard to 
him." Herbert Spencer says, "Religion 
everywhere present as a weft running 
through the warp of human history ex- 
presses some eternal fact." "Even the 
most sceptical of men," says John Stuart 
Mill, " have an inner altar to the Unseen 
Perfection, while waiting for the true 
one to be presented to them." We may 
again quote Herbert Spencer, who is 
often unjustly spoken of as either atheist 
or agnostic : " One truth must ever grow 
clearer— the truth that there is an in- 
scrutable existence everywhere manifest 
to which he [man] can never find nor 
conceive either beginning or end. Amid 
the mysteries which become the more 
mysterious the more they are thought 
about, there will remain the one absolute 
certainty that he is ever in the presence 



32 THE INNER LIFE: 

of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from 
which all things proceed." 

This " Energy" is the " entity having 
intellectual and moral quality," and we 
call him God, and he is the " Unseen 
Perfection " to which — to whom John 
Stuart Mill introduces us. 

Darwin in 1873 writes, "The impossi- 
bility of conceiving that this grand and 
wondrous universe with our conscious 
selves arose through chance seems to me 
the chief argument for the existence of a 
God ; " and in 1879 he again wrote, " In 
my most extreme fluctuations, I have 
never been an atheist in the sense of de- 
nying the existence of a God." 

We have a light which we call con- 
science, which every man in some meas- 
ure possesses. Byron calls it, " The 
oracle of God, the vicegerent of God," 
and Browning, " God's beacon-light " ; 
and Kant says, " My belief in God and 
in another world is so interwoven with 
my moral nature that I am as little under 
apprehension of having the former torn 
from me as of losing the latter." 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 33 

Thus it is that the consciousness of 
morals, — and, indeed, the very conscious- 
ness of self —carries with it the capability 
of being conscious of God. Man sees 
the world beyond him. He sees the self 
within him. He may see the God about 
and above him. Conscience is that sig- 
nal-bell in the soul which the heavens 
ring to remind man of obligation, of 
God, of destiny. If man will not heed 
the call and put forth the hand of faith, 
superstition will take the place of truth 
and possess the inner life. Man must 
worship. Conscience must speak. The 
soul cannot live in itself and by itself. 
It must have something to do with the 
things of a moral and spiritual realm. 
Some guest must come in. 

God and duty are acknowledged by the 
pagan philosophers. They express the 
hope of a better and of a future life. 
But their hope is mixed with doubt and 
uncertainty. 

The conflict between two natures in 
man is universal, and every whore we hear 
the cry for help, and there is a recogni- 



34 THE INNER LIFE: 

tion of a realm invisible whence help may 
come. 

XVI. 



N the study of the inner life we find 
not merely activity within, but in 
every man a dominating trend of 
character. He is always thinking, 
but he is also always thinking toward one 
ruling end of life. What a man desires, 
he thinks about and plans for. The con- 
trolling desire determines the direction 
of all subordinate desires. The creeks 
all run down toward the river, that they 
may become a part of the river. 

Every man by the study of his inner 
tendency may tell what is likely to be the 
final make-up of his character. The true 
soul may drop into the vortex of self as 
into a whirlpool, thinking of self, caring 
for self, planning for self, serving self. 
Or it may spring heavenward like a foun- 
tain, and against the natural tendency 
maintain a steady and eternal movement 
toward righteousness and the God of 
righteousness, delighting in him, turning 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 35 

away from the lower and ever aspiring 
after the things that are above. 



XVII. 



T is an important question, which 
every man should often ask, and 
to which he should find true an- 
swer : What is the ruling tendency 
of my nature ? What do I most care 
for ? What do I most naturally, easily, 
and habitually think about and choose ? 

All men, even those who are at times 
extremely sceptical, have now and then 
a sense of relationship to an invisible, all- 
encompassing spiritual world. One at 
such a time is not surprised at the thought 
of intelligences who give secret help in 
the inward struggles of life. It does not 
surprise him to be told that temptations 
to evil and help in righteousness come 
to him from these invisible sources. He 
knows full well that he needs help from 
without. He at times feels almost con- 
fident that he is one of the vast multitude 
of unseen beings, and that his doings are 



36 THE INNER LIFE: 

known by them, and that forces of 
strength and consolation come to him 
from or through friendly energies and 
spiritual allies. 



XVIII. 




HE study of the inner life becomes 
the duty of every thoughtful soul. 
Introspection may sometimes be 
harmful, but again it is in some 
cases indispensable. There are three 
forms of introspection. 

The first is scientific. Large service is 
rendered in these days by the students 
of what is called " the new psychology," 
who as psychologists and physiologists 
investigate normal and morbid conditions 
and seek to know society the better 
through the study of the individual. 

The immediate object of such self -scru- 
tiny is educational. It promotes the 
habit of attention, which is more difficult 
when fixed upon one's own self in his in- 
terior processes, and all the more valu- 
able when it is at all successful. This 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 37 

habit cultivates the analytic power ; 
measures one's own intellectual quality ; 
aids in the study of literature; contrib- 
utes to the better education of the mor- 
bid, unfortunate, and vicious representa- 
tives of the race ; tends to self -culture ; 
broadens the fields of consciousness ; and 
increases their extent and the student's 
command of them ; and there is no 
process by which one's own soul is so 
stimulated to self -activity and produc- 
tiveness. 

Self-scrutiny has a religious value. 
One may thus increase his interest in 
both ethical and spiritual phenomena, 
test his personal and religious condition, 
protect himself, if his work be wisely 
wrought, against self-deception, develop 
sympathy with other people, and increase 
his power to harmonize and discharge 
the varied duties which his multiplied re- 
lations impose. There may be utter self- 
ishness in religious self-examination. This 
is especially the danger if it be conducted 
under pressure of fear and superstition or 
of excessive personal solicitude. Dr. 



38 THE INNER LIFE: 

Horace Bushnell in a very able sermon 
warns against the unprofitable type of 
religious self-scrutiny. He says that 
generally " in noting things that pass in 
us we have only a look at the huddle of 
their transition." He condemns the man 
who is " always boring into one's life," 
who is always trying to "study and 
cipher over himself " ; and he wisely 
makes appeal in behalf of discrimination, 
and insists upon prayer to God that His 
Holy Spirit may examine and reveal us 
to ourselves. 

In self-examination we may detect 
movements, tendencies, and prevailing 
forces within us. We may study chains 
of association by which we are led from 
step to step through a given mental 
process. We may learn how our senti- 
ments and moral faculties are affected by 
both fact and fancy. We may compare 
personal impressions and experiences with 
others who, engaging in the same studies, 
seek to know themselves. 

It was the habit of the old Stoic Sextus, 
as he went to his bed at night, to ask of 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 39 

himself, ""What evil thing have I con- 
quered this day ? what vice resisted ? or in 
what way might I have become a better 
man?" Seneca tells how at night his 
wife would keep silent while he for a 
time looked back over the day, calling up 
his deeds, hiding nothing from himself, 
remembering the words he had spoken ; 
and he insisted that we should daily com- 
pel the soul to give an account of itself. 
He says : " Anger will cease or become 
more moderate which knows it will daily 
have to come before a judge. What then 
more beautiful than this habit of beating 
out a whole day ? What a sleep is that 
which furnishes opportunity for such an 
examination ! How tranquil and pro- 
found and free when the soul has thus 
been commended and admonished ! " 
The day has not yet gone by when wise 
Christians may learn useful lessons from 
wise pagans. 



40 TEE INNER LIFE: 



XIX. 




UT there is One whose knowledge 
of the inner life transcends the 
human knowledge of all the days. 
Let us inquire concerning him. 
Above all teachers concerning the inner 
life is Jesus Christ ; Christ as set forth in 
the New Testament ; not the Christ of 
Strauss, nor the Christ of Penan, but the 
Christ reported by his four biographers, 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and 
represented by his four apostles, Paul, 
Peter, James, and John ; the exponent of 
the divine ideal of human character and 
conduct ; his life unique, universal in its 
adaptation and mission, setting forth the 
divine attitude toward the human race ; 
the exponent of the inner life possible to 
humanity, — a life of strength, conflict, 
peace, purity, and power. 

Christ himself is the all and in all of 
Christianity. His character transcends all 
characters known to human history. He 
was a man of matchless purity, wisdom, 
good sense, good will, reverence, and 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 41 

righteousness. His character, teachings, 
and influence meet the universal demand 
in human nature for guidance, for de- 
liverance from all unseen sources of peril, 
for the attainment of a complete and en- 
during personal character, and for the 
realization of a final social order which 
shall bring the race of man into harmony 
with God. 

It is impossible that Jesus Christ should 
have been either deceived or he himself a 
deceiver. Therefore all who enter into 
his spirit, and embrace with consenting 
will and warmed affections the inner life 
which he sets forth as possible to men, 
are ready to accept the supernatural and 
divine elements which enter into it and 
can alone explain the amazing results of 
its presence in human history. The 
divine element is so inwrought into the 
texture of the history which reports the 
human and easily apprehensive part of it 
that if one goes all goes; and we may 
say with Luther, " If Jesus be not God, 
he is not good." 

The Christianity in which we believe 



42 THE INNER LIFE: 

accepts the gospel according to John as 
well as that of the Synoptists. It finds 
the subjective life of Christ as set forth 
by this evangelist full of true religious 
consciousness, charm, and power. It 
sees in the Old Testament a gradual un- 
folding of the divine ideal and neces- 
sarily imperfect, as the apparatus of the 
kindergarten must be imperfect in the 
eye of the collegian. But in that old 
kindergarten system of the tabernacle, 
with its Shekinah, bending cherubim, 
enfolding cloud, and hidden fire, there is 
manifested the God of the race as re- 
vealed in the wisdom, mercy, love, life, 
and power of Christ. Chrysostom says, 
" The true Shekinah is man." This is the 
flower and fruit of the whole Christian 
system — God dwelling and reigning 
through Christ by his Holy Spirit in the 
human soul. This is the divine inner life 
made possible to humanity. 

Christ is to the individual the sun of 
righteousness, the atmosphere, a foun- 
tain of living water, a vine holding the 
branches and supplying them with life and 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 43 

strength, our shepherd, friend, brother, 
nearer and dearer than brother, sister, 
father, mother ! 

What is the mystical bond, that holds 
child and father together, quickening 
their heart-beat and joy at their mutual 
approach? What is the bond between 
lovers where glances speak volumes, 
which in absence binds them together in 
confidence and affection that may be ac- 
counted perfect ? 



S this inner life a reality of human 
experience ? 

Christianity sets forth and in- 
sists upon the possibilities of an 
inner spiritual life, more tender, more 
true, more positive in its ministrations 
and inward witnessings than any phe- 
nomena of human confidence, affection, 
and delight. The human soul is thus 
subject to divine influence direct — spirit 
upon spirit, life within life. 



44 THE INNER LIFE: 



XXI. 




HE inner life under the strength 
and illumination of Christ is the 
very centre and soul of Chris- 
tianity, and is true to the facts 
of human nature. The Old and the ISTew 
Testament characters represent nine- 
teenth-century human nature with all of 
its infirmities. We find there the same 
struggle over righteousness; the same 
conflict between the two natures re- 
vealed in Paul's letter to the Eomans; 
David on one hand a man after God's 
own heart, and vet left to himself basest 
of the base. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 
represent in fiction facts of human nature 
set forth with plainest speech in the reve- 
lation of God. 

Our contention is that the play of the 
divine life on the inner life transforms, 
exalts, purifies, glorifies, the human soul, 
as an honorable lover's love, with its 
quickening power, character, motives, 
memory, conscience, and purposes. Said 
Napoleon's soldier, under the surgeon's 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 45 

knife, " Probe a little deeper, and you 
will find the emperor." 

The ocean rolls in at high tide into 
every creek until the marsh is submerged. 
As Sidney Lanier sings : — 

"And the sea lends large, as the marsh. Lo, ont of 
his plenty the sea 
Pours fast. Full soon the time of the flood-tide 

must be : 
Look how the grace of the sea doth go 
About and about through the intricate channels 
that flow 

Here and there, 
Everywhere, 
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks 

and the low-lying lanes, 
And the marsh is meshed with a million veins, 
That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow, 
In the rose-and-silver evening glow. ' 7 

We have thus represented in the strong- 
est manner possible to us the positive 
theory of Christianity, teaching the rela- 
tion of Christ to the individual soul. We 
claim what Paul and John claimed con- 
cerning the " new creation " effected un- 
der the Christian scheme by the Holy 
Spirit of God. We have accepted what 




46 THE INNER LIFE: 

is called "orthodoxy," and claim for it 
all that Christ and Paul and Peter and 
James claimed from the Advent to Pen- 
tecost and from Pentecost to the glorious 
Epiphany on Patmos. 



XXII. 

HEEE is a religious, a Christian 
consciousness. It is not one thing 
with the pagan and another thing 
with the Christian, save in this, 
that the cravings of the latter are satis- 
fled with the fulness of the revelation 
made in Christ. The consciousness of 
humanity as concerning God and duty, 
guilt and need, is universal. You find it 
in heathen lands. You find it in Chris- 
tian lands. The religious pagan longs 
after God, and gropes in darkness, albeit 
there comes to him a measure of strength 
when his moral nature responds to the 
best light that is in him. But the re- 
sponse which the Christian receives, as 
he yields to the voice of revelation inter- 
preted by the Spirit of God, is definite, 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 47 

distinct, and full of cheer and power. 
The Christian conscience is full of light. 
The earnest pagan lives where midnight 
reigns a large part of the year, where 
fields of ice form, and desolate moun- 
tains frown and verdure is rarely seen; 
nevertheless, he lives and enjoys life, and 
loves and is loved, and would rather live 
than die. But the Christian lives in 
other zones, where spring comes with its 
hope, summer with its promise, and au- 
tumn with its fulfilment, and where win- 
ter, through the munificence of autumn 
and the confidence in a coming spring, 
is made more than endurable, even full 
of delight. 

The comprehensive study of the world 
religions discloses an inter-relation and 
harmony which give proof of a divine 
purpose in pagan and partial religious 
systems as well as in Christianity. But 
this as the latest and highest of all is 
completely adapted to the needs of hu- 
manity. 

If we look with wide and comprehen- 
sive vision, we shall see that the various 



48 THE INNER LIFE: 

religious systems have contributed their 
share toward final perfection. The calm- 
ness, stoicism, and submissiveness of one 
people ; the loyalty and righteousness 
and reverence for Jehovah in another; 
the culture, the flexibility, the sensitive- 
ness, and refinement of a third; the ag- 
gressive and administrative and civilizing 
power of a fourth, have all centred in 
the Christianity represented by the Anglo- 
Saxon, and Christ has been present and 
potent in all. 

There is an inner life, Christian and 
spiritual, in men who are not wholly 
what is called evangelical. We find in 
this school such men as Channing, Mar- 
tineau, the elder Peabody, to say noth- 
ing of representative Unitarians, who still 
occupy a place in this generation — good 
men and just, reverent and philanthropic. 
Through the universal grace of Christ 
there is a measure of good in every man. 
Everywhere you will find an ideal, an 
impulse, a resolve, a regret over fail- 
ure, and a measure of earnest endeavor. 
Such men may not make the full response 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 49 

to what the evangelical believer calls the 
highest power of Christianity ; but what 
all such men have is Christ, — the Light 
which lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world ; and whatever diversities 
of opinion they and we may hold con- 
cerning Christ, certainly the Father whom 
both they and we worship is the Father 
of Jesus Christ set forth by him in com- 
mand, in parable, in figure, in conduct, 
and in life. And God is now being more 
and more understood by the interpreta- 
tive power of Jesus himself. 



XXIII. 

OES our reader remember the pic- 
ture at the beginning of this 
booklet, — of landscape, moun- 
tain, plain, river, promontory, 
boundless sea, veiled with a cloud of mist 
and darkened with the darkening night, 
until ■ only one light shone out from the 
summit of the lofty lighthouse? Do 
you remember the deeper shadow resting 
on the face of a troubled man, hanging 




50 THE INNER LIFE : 

for forty years over him ? Such is hu- 
man experience without the light of the 
gospel of Christ. 

May we present to you the same land- 
scape, a cloudless sky overarching it, the 
glorious sun pouring its wealth of light 
and splendor upon land and sea? The 
coming night makes little difference ; for, 
instead of one sun, thousands of worlds 
look down with benediction, reflecting 
their light in the dancing waves, and the 
moon in her beauty gilds with silver 
sheen the world below. The man stands 
as he stood before. But now everything 
of the outer world is changed. No ex- 
ternal glory could be greater, no breath 
from the sea more stimulating, no glory 
of the sun more dazzling. But he still 
wears that look of anxiety and trouble. 
Memory does her work as faithfully, and 
sadness reigns as darkly, when the sun 
shines as when the clouds cover the sky. 
The same memory of unworthy motive 
and dishonorable deed oppresses him. It 
is not in any gift of landscape nor in any 
breath wafted over the sea to lift the 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 51 

cloud of discouragement, lighten the load 
of guilt, or illuminate with smiles the face 
that remorse has shadowed. 

The outer world has been transformed, 
but the inner world remains the same. 
He may lose the vivid apprehension of 
the reality ; but it will be only for a time, 
and underneath a temporary elation of 
spirit there will be the undertone of sad- 
ness, breaking now and then into a note 
of despair. 

What the outward world cannot do, 
the declaration of divine pity, sympathy, 
love, strength, forgiving grace, and re- 
newing power may do. If John Bunyan's 
Evangelist could come to the man in his 
desolation, and tell him the story we 
might all tell him of the patient Christ, 
the abounding pardon, the measureless 
love of God, " wider than the wideness of 
the sea " ; if the man could be taken — a 
poor pilgrim — to the house of the Inter- 
preter, and receive lessons of grace from 
ministers of mercy, we might then see 
him stand in the midst of this familiar 
landscape with bare brow, his face aglow, 



52 THE INNER LIFE: 

in his heart strength of purpose, the love 
of righteousness, the loathing of evil, the 
light of hope, and a definite consciousness 
of harmony with the universe of which 
he is a part. And whether the mist and 
the night settle over him, or the glory of 
the heavens shine upon him, the inner 
world, being transformed by the infinite 
love of God, would make outward things 
of little account, giving brightness even 
in the darkness, and making brightness 
brighter because of the clearer light of 
the eternal day. 

This is what Christianity can do for 
the inner life of men of all races, of all 
sorts and conditions. This is what Chris- 
tianity has done for ages where it has 
been tested. This is what Christianity 
is doing to-day more widely and more 
effectively than ever before. 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 53 



XXIY. 



T would be very interesting to study 
the inner life of the apostles, who 
were the immediate successors of 
Jesus Christ and most of them 
personally conversant with him while he 
was on the earth. The study of the in- 
ner life of Christ is in itself a subject suf- 
ficient to occupy a whole volume. And 
most interesting would be the study of 
the life-experience of Christians of every 
age from the days of St. John to the 
days of Matthew Simpson, Henry Drum- 
mond, and D wight L. Moody. 

Christianity presents a philosophy of 
subjective experience. Then it says : 
Trust, test, demonstrate. Believe, and 
thou shalt be able to know, to do, to be. 
Open the windows, and the light will 
come in. 

Here is opportunity for experiment. 
The saints by the ten thousand have 
made the experiment. It has never once 
failed. 

The essence of religion is the divine 



54 THE INNER LIFE: 

indwelling — God in the individual soul. 
This religious consciousness any one may 
have. Of course it is a testimony con- 
cerning personal thought, feeling, expe- 
rience. But this test medical science uses. 
Even the sceptical physician will ask the 
patient how he "feels." He puts great 
stress on the patient's testimony. If he 
finds that he must discount it for the time 
being, he nevertheless asks the question 
again and again, " How do you feel ? " 
He aids the patient by indicating symp- 
toms. But even this depends upon the 
patient's prompt, emphatic, and intelli- 
gent declaration as to a subjective expe- 
rience corresponding with the physician's 
suggestions. As normal conditions re- 
turn to his patient, he continues to ask, 
"How do you feel?" He listens with, 
pleasure to his patient's later account of 
the processes by which the physician 
wrought the good work of healing, and 
the same physician who smiles with ill- 
disguised contempt at a Christian's testi- 
mony asks permission to record and pub- 
lish in some medical journal the expe- 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 55 

riences of the restored invalid. And more 
than once he sends a marked copy of the 
testimony as proof of his own skill and 
success. 

XXV. 




MIGHTY host of witnesses might 
be summoned to sustain the claim 
of Christ to heal the soul of its 
worst maladies, to give light for 
darkness, peace for unrest, love for hate 
or apathy, life for death. 

Names of multitudes forgotten on earth 
are " writ large " in the house of the King 
above, — names of slaves, of colliers, of 
soldiers, of artisans, of miners, of shep- 
herds, of busy housekeepers, of plough- 
boys and peasants, of people of all sorts 
and conditions, who, hearing the truth, 
accepted it, loved it, lived it, and now 
live the eternal life through faith in 
Christ. If the representatives of this 
inner life and experience could now give 
witness out of the heavens, the glory of 
their presence would at this moment daz- 
zle our eyes to blindness, the melody of 



56 THE INNER LIFE: 

their voices would ravish our souls, and 
we should find ourselves surrounded by a 
great multitude whom no man can num- 
ber, who are eager everywhere and al- 
ways to sing of Him who giveth life to 
the souls of men. 

We have spoken of Christian expe- 
riences in lowly homes. We recall a 
sweet and patient child who nearly fifty 
years ago worked in a New Jersey fac- 
tory, held family prayer by her non-pro- 
fessing father's consent in their little 
home, won her mother and her brother 
to Christ, taught in the Sunday-school, 
toiled at the loom, belonged to a little 
country church, and by her simple, fer- 
vent, intelligent piety filled the whole 
community and fills that little church to 
this day with the sweet perfume of re- 
membered gentleness, purity, and devo- 
tion. 

Every church has its representatives of 
this inner, higher, holier life. They may 
occupy humble places in the public wor- 
ship. Their voices are heard only now 
and then in the social meeting. The car- 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 57 

riages of the rich never stop at their 
doors ; but they combine to form divine 
mosaics of personal and social Christian 
character, which adorn the church of the 
living God far more beautifully than the 
most brilliant works of art. We write 
huge biographies of the renowned saints ; 
hut how many lives unwritten on earth 
are recorded on the immortal pages 
above ! In our library firmament we see 
a few stars ; but what wealth of spiritual 
beauty shines in the heavens of our his- 
tory, representing all conditions — pov- 
erty, wealth, weakness, power, and all 
stages of experience — startled apathy, in- 
tense anxiety, restful faith, divine peace, 
and spiritual power ! 

XXYI. 



0¥ glad we should be to unfold 
at length some of the lives 
which Christian literature pre- 
sents ! Take, for example, the 
absolute faith, the perfect humility, the 
unruffled calmness, of Zachary Macaulay ; 




58 THE INNER LIFE: 

the truth-loving and truth-living of John 
Duncan, of Scotland, of whom Dr. Camp- 
bell says, "He lives in the truth of 
things." Think of the frank, affection- 
ate, honest, persistent, generous Samuel 
Budgett, " the successful merchant " 
whom William Arthur has immortalized, 
who from behind a grocer's counter rose 
until as the " great Budgett " he built his 
warehouses and extended his trade over 
England and over the seas. On his 
deathbed he said, " Eiches I have had 
as much as my heart could desire ; but I 
never felt any pleasure in them for their 
own sake, only so far as they enabled me 
to give pleasure to others." Again he 
said to a friend : " I sent for you to tell 
you how happy I am ; not a wave, not a 
ripple, not a fear, not a shadow of doubt. 
I did not think it was possible for man 
to enjoy so much of God upon earth. I 
am filled with God ! I like to hear of the 
beauties of heaven, but I do not dwell 
upon them ; no, what I rejoice in is this, 
that Christ will be there. Where he is, 
there shall I be also. I know that he is 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 59 

in me and I in him. I shall see him as he 
is. I delight in knowing that." 

Look at Wilberforce, living solely for 
others, devoting himself to the suppres- 
sion of the slave-trade and the reforma- 
tion of manners. He was fascinating in 
society ; but, as Bayne forcibly says, 
" he escaped from being a character of a 
sort which is surely one of the most piti- 
ful human life can show, — a fashionable 
wit and jester." Wilberforce was a dili- 
gent, critical, spiritual student of the 
Word of God. He recognized himself 
everywhere as a child of God, capable of 
entering any sphere of public life, shining 
brilliantly in society, surrendering him- 
self to the service of humanity, and al- 
ways abiding in the peace of God. 

There, too, is John Howard, and after 
him come Elizabeth Fry and the dear 
Gurney. What brave, godly, gentle, 
potent spirits they were ! In the midst 
of his practical ministries in behalf of 
prisoners, John Howard writes to a 
friend : " Commune with thy own heart ; 
see what progress thou makest in thy re- 



60 THE INNER LIFE: 

ligious journey. Art thou nearer the 
heavenly Canaan, the vital flame burning 
clearer and clearer? Or are the con- 
cerns of the common engrossing thy 
knowledge ? A little while and the 
journey shall be ended. Be thou faithful 
unto death." According to the sweet 
record of his death, after his intercession 
for his son and for the afflicted with 
whom he always sympathized, he said to 
his old friend Admiral Priestman : " Let 
me beg of you, as you value your old 
friend, not to suffer any pomp to be 
used at my funeral, nor any monument 
or monumental inscription whatever to 
mark where I am laid. But lay me 
quietly in the earth, place a dial over my 
grave, and let me be forgotten." And 
then, with a smile of peace, he passed 
away. 

Mrs. Fry, at the end of her life, made 
this remarkable statement : " I can say 
one thing ; since my heart was touched 
at seventeen years old, I believe I have 
never wakened from sleep, in sickness or 
in health, by day or by night, without 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 61 

my first waking thought being how best 
I might serve the Lord." 

The life of Stephen Grellet was a life 
filled with inner peace. And John Fos- 
ter, who as few men knew the agony of 
doubt, exclaimed in his earlier years, 
" Oh, what a difficult thing it is to be a 
Christian ! I feel the necessity of reform 
through all my soul." But within him a 
lamp was lighted. Earnestness was his 
peculiar endowment. He felt the awful- 
ness and the reality of life. His man- 
hood was most serious. At the last he 
spoke of his increasing weakness, and 
added, "But I can pray, and that is a 
glorious thing." 

There, too, was Frederick W. Robert- 
son, cultivated, consecrated, struggling 
for years against doubt, clinging through 
the later years of his life, as he said, to 
" the one great certainty to which, in the 
midst of darkest doubt, I never cease to 
cling, the entire symmetry and loveli- 
ness and the unequalled nobleness of the 
humanity of the Son of man." 

Hear that gifted preacher of Brighton 



62 THE INNER LIFE: 

as he prays : " Bring into captivity every 
thought to the obedience of Christ. Take 
what I cannot give, — my heart, body, 
thought, time, abilities, money, health, 
strength, nights, days, youth, age, and 
spend them in thy service, O my cruci- 
fied Master, Redeemer, God ! O let not 
these be mere words." 

There, too, is that delightful circle of 
cultivated souls, the Hares, — Augustus, 
Julius, Marcus, Francis. What pictures 
do "The Memorials of a Quiet Life" 
bring us of those delightful people, who 
enjoyed the incidental pleasures of so- 
ciety, but the tone of whose lives came 
from heaven. As Mrs. Augustus Hare 
wrote, " What we can do for God is 
little or nothing, but we must do our lit- 
tle nothing for his glory." She says: 
"The happy Christian is no enthusiast. 
He is one of the most reasonable men in 
the world. Our own frames and feelings 
may change, but our consolations are 
based on God's Word, and those who en- 
joy them can trust for them." Of her 
death her gifted and beloved nephew 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 63 

wrote : " Though I can tell the words 
she said, I can never give — no descrip- 
tion can — an idea of the unearthly 
beauty of her face, of her uplifted eyes, 
of her trembling hands clasped solemnly 
in prayer or raised in blessing. It was 
in that last night that in a moment of in- 
comprehensible glory, in which all who 
were watching seemed carried up with 
her in spirit to the very gates of God, 
she seemed to see the heavens opened, 
and spoke with rapture of a beautiful 
white dove that floated down toward 
her." 

But time would fail me to tell of all 
the illustrious souls who have loved and 
lived, suffered and borne about in their 
bodies the marks — these marks of pa- 
tience, grace, and beauty — of the Lord 
Jesus, and whose names are on earth as 
well as in heaven. 

How ecstatic was the joy of Euther- 
ford! What hunger after righteousness, 
loathing of sin, exultation of divine holi- 
ness and spiritual ravishment in the ex- 
perience of Eobert Murray McCheyne! 



64 THE INNER LIFE: 

"What spirit of philanthropy, what energy 
of reform, what saintliness of manhood, 
in the noted and humble John Woolman ! 
Then there are Madame Guyon, Thomas 
a Kempis, John Wesley, Carvosso, John 
Fletcher, the Tennents, Edward Payson 
— but there is no end to the list ! 

Do you remember John Bunyan's ex- 
perience when he said : " If Satan and 
I ever strived for any word of God in all 
my life, it was for this food-word of 
Christ. He at one end and I at the 
other. O what work we had ! He pulled 
and I pulled ; but, God be praised, I over- 
came him ; I got sweetness out of it." 
At another time he says, " I saw more in 
the words, ' heirs of God,' than ever I 
shall be able to express while I live in 
this world." Again: "I had not sat 
above two or three minutes but there 
came bolting in upon me 'an innumer- 
able company of angels, 5 and with all the 
twelfth chapter of Hebrews of Mount 
Zion was set before my eyes, that with 
joy I told my wife, ' O now I know.' It 
was a blessed Scripture to me for many 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 65 

days, and through this sentence the Lord 
led me over and over, and first to this 
word, and then to that, and showed me 
wonderful glory in every one of them." 

The revelations of the inner life are 
not so much revelations of new truth as 
illuminations of the old. As Erskine 
once wrote : " I have had one revela- 
tion ; it is now, I am sorry to sa} T , a mat- 
ter of memory with me. It was not a 
revelation of anything that was new to 
me. After it I did not know anything 
which I did not know before. But it was 
a joy for which one might hear any sor- 
row. I felt the power of love, that God 
is love, that he loved me, that he had 
spoken to me, that he had broken silence 
to me." 

O, there is an indwelling of Christ in 
the heart of the believer which is as 
when water penetrates to every part of a 
sponge, or the sun pours its light and 
warmth through our entire bodies, as 
John Pulsford says, "through and 
through every muscle, every nerve, every 
drop of our blood." It is as when the 



66 THE INNER LIFE: 

high tide rolls up through the marsh, fill- 
ing every stream with his presence, that 
the Spirit of the living God possesses a 
human soul, and Christ through his Holy 
Spirit enters, permeates, dominates, the 
entire personality, and answers the 
prayer of Tennyson, — 

" O f or a man to arise in me 
That the man that I am may cease to be ! ^ 

Paul says, " I live, yet not I, but Christ 
liveth in me ; " justifying Luther's state- 
ment, " Should any one knock at my 
breast and say, 'Who lives here?' I 
should reply, 'Not Martin Luther, but 
the Lord Jesus.' " 

Maurice declares, " I have been taught 
by proofs which have overcome all my 
natural unbelief and despondency, that 
the Spirit does speak in us and through 
us." He also speaks of being "a joyful 
fellow worker with the Holy Spirit, hav- 
ing a dispensation intrusted to me." 

A Roman priest, Joseph Eoux, ex- 
claims : " Since in possessing you we 
possess all if we had nothing else, and in 

Life. 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 67 

not possessing you we had nothing if we 
had all the rest, O my God, I will love 
you, that I may possess you upon earth, 
and I will possess you, that I may love 
you one day in heaven." 

And Thomas a Kempis : " All the 
glory and beauty of Christ are manifested 
within, and there he delights to dwell. 
His visits are frequent, his condescension 
amazing, his conversation sweet, his com- 
forts refreshing, and the peace that he 
brings passeth all understanding." 

We might quote whole pages from the 
writings of the saints of God in all the 
generations. 



XXVII. 

ND how true is all this to human 
nature ! Has the reader never 
said, under the pressure of some 
anxiety, some sense of incom- 




petency, some weariness of spirit, some 
heavy burden : " I was perfectly 
wretched ; " " All the light went out of 
my life ; " " It seems as if I had a load of 



68 THE INNER LIFE: 

lead upon me ; " "I could not sleep ; " 
" I wanted to die " ? 

Again, how often, amidst the comforts 
of life, there come unutterable raptures, 
as when a long-absent friend returns, 
some dear one recovers from severe ill- 
ness, and despair is driven out that hope 
may sing her song again ! 

How often have you listened to the 
rendering of some fine musical composi- 
tion, and have said: "I was carried 
away ; " "I never enjoyed anything so 
much in my life ; " "I was so full of joy 
that my very gladness became oppress- 
ive"! 

Do you wonder that, when a human 
soul has submitted to God, and his Holy 
Spirit has entered to give witness of par- 
don and sonship and the assurance of 
eternal fellowship with God, — do you 
wonder that the human heart will some- 
times be too full for utterance ? 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 69 



XXVIII. 




OW may we promote a normal in- 
ner life ? I answer : Let us daily 
make close, candid, intelligent 
self-inspection. Let us find the 
ruling motive, and condemn and seek 
to overcome every tendency to self- 
ishness. Let us fix our thought persist- 
ently and with strength of purpose on 
the character and office and words of the 
Lord Jesus, and rest with confidence in his 
promise of transforming power. Let us 
with consenting will open our souls to 
the free play and dominion of the Holy 
Spirit of God. Let us study closely and 
with prayer the Holy Scriptures, espe- 
cially the testimony therein contained of 
devout souls who put their trust in God. 
Let us read habitually the lives of earnest 
souls who since the days of the apostles 
in all ages of the church have believed in 
Christ and have sought to live under his 
personal guidance. Let us surrender 
ourselves to the highest at any present 



70 TEE INNER LIFE: 

time attainable. If one cannot begin 
with transfiguration or resurrection, let 
him begin with righteousness. Let him 
deal with duty and not with difficulties ; 
exercising w r holesome self-restraint; cul- 
tivating more and more a sense of per- 
sonal responsibility for social and polit- 
ical conditions ; cultivating the sense of 
obligation ; looking race ward, not wholly 
heavenward ; living the altruistic life ; 
committing one's self in the presence of 
man to the service of Christ ; openly 
avowing before the world the measure of 
faith we already have ; giving oppor- 
tunity to the inner life force ; listening 
for the voice that tells of duty ; suspend- 
ing activity to give opportunity in silence 
for the Spirit of power within; regulat- 
ing our environment in the interest of 
personal growth and usefulness ; putting 
ourselves into conditions favorable to the 
end we seek. 

When Carlyle began to write the life 
of Frederick the Great, he tried to real- 
ize all the conditions of Prussian life. He 
used a desk brought from Germany. His 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 71 

inkstand was from Germany. The paper 
upon which he wrote was from Germany. 
The ink he used was from Germany. 
And the very pictures on the wall were 
German pictures. Let us seek the Chris- 
tian environment. 

To secure the true inner life, one must 
cultivate both will power and faith. He 
must say, "I will believe." He must 
struggle, as Thomas Erskine said, "to 
take part with God against himself." He 
must cultivate and study serenity. He 
must sing with Bonar, " Calm me, my 
God, and keep me calm." He must ac- 
quire a responsive moral sense, spiritual 
sensitiveness, and make his religion a 
thing of every day. 

We have often thought we should like 
to see Thomas a Kempis a trolley-car con- 
ductor or a motorman. Why not ? The 
true Christian must think of God, delight 
in God, live for God, in all things, al- 
ways, — at the table, in the parlor, in 
travel, in the study of art and science, in 
the pursuit of business, in sickness, in 
death. He must be religious and ra- 



72 THE INNER LIFE. 

tional, following Livingstone's rule, " Fear 
God and work hard." 

He must seek the type of piety defined 
of Augustus Hare, " To be ardent with- 
out affectation, enthusiastic without in- 
constancy, vigorous without assumption, 
cheerful without irreverence, equal to all 
occasions without courting either ap- 
plause or opposition." 

Into this deeper, larger, loftier, nobler 
life lead each one of us, O Holy Spirit of 
the Eternal God, through Jesus Christ 
our Saviour ! Amen. 



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